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Figurative Language In Toni Morrison's Beloved

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Analysis of Toni Morrison's Beloved
The book Beloved by Toni Morrison is a very interesting but peculiar book. The book flashes back from the present, past, and future, so often, you really have to pay attention or you will get lost. The book overviews slave's life, but goes into detail about one slave, Sethe. Toni Morrison, of Beloved creates a magic-realistic story based on the life of Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery just like the main character. Between Sethe and Beloved, there is always a dramatic situation occurring. Sethe, a former slave, lives in house 124 in Cincinnati, Ohio along with her daughter, Denver, her two sons, Howard and Buglar, and Baby Snuggs, her mother-in-law. Many years ago Sethe gave birth to a beautiful baby girl but ended up killing her while she was just a sweet little infant to keep her from getting taken by the slave catchers and being treated horribly as a slave. After she killed her baby many people that knew Sethe, held a grudge against her including her mother-in-law. Proceeding the death of Sethe’s baby, Baby Snuggs became very ill and eventually passed away. The death of Baby Snuggs caused Howard and Buglar to …show more content…

Morrison uses figurative language in such a way you can see much more than what is presented to you in black and white. Morrison is able to create a vivid image in your mind with the way she uses figurative language. “Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place-- the picture of it--stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world.”(Morrison 21)
In this excerpt from the book you can see Morrison’s unique word choice, she uses the word rememory to describe a memory you revisit. Her word choice is unique and the way she uses it is what helps make the meaning of the

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Within the first five stanzas, Bishop focuses on losses everyone has felt and uses simple speech to truly include everyone. There are no difficult words or concepts so all readers understand what is being said. “Places and names” and a “watch” are not unusual to lose or forget. Some readers can not remember names and others never know the time because they forget or lose their watch. These occurrences are used to convince readers that losing something is not hard.

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The words “ghost” and “haunt” are used to describe how the memories impact Charlie. While Charlie is trying to turn his life around, his memories slow him down. For example, when Lorraine asks for Charlie’s address, “he hesitated, unwilling to give the name of his hotel” (Fitzgerald 217). Here, the walking memory, Lorraine, serves as a secondary conflict for Charlie. It is also shown that Charlie resists the memory to focus on his main goal.

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In Recitatif, Morrison introduces her readers to an approach to the initial interpretation of racism made by the readers. By contrasting Twyla and Roberta's appearances, social lives, and occupations, the readers are able to grasp on to the differences of the two characters. After finally meeting since their last encounter, the readers can depict the tone of tension between the two ladies, hinting that the protagonists have changed overtime. Toni Morrison challenges the initial assumption made by the reader on race and racism through the literary device of foil, contrasting the protagonists, Twyla and Roberta. Morrison compares and contrasts the appearances of the characters, making the readers assume the race of the characters.

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“The process of learning requires not only hearing and applying but also forgetting and then remembering again.” (John Gray). Billy Collins, author of the poem “Forgetfulness”, speaks of forgetting, and how easy it is to get rid of memories and to replace them with others. On the contrary, E.B. White’s “Once More to the Lake” talks about the themes of remembering, nostalgia, and how easy it is to reminisce about old memories after they have been reactivated. Both authors use literary devices to express theme.

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In this excerpt Baby Suggs is at her deathbed after she is impacted by Sethe killing her daughter, yet she is using the little energy left to become preoccupied with color. Throughout Beloved there is a religious symbolism of two connected colors, white and red, the white of milk and the red of blood, both colors represent the beginning and and to the human life. Paul D shuts his red heart in a rusted tobacco box, Denver drinks her sister’s blood and her mother’s milk, the source of Baby Suggs’ life and her religious calling in the green clearing is the life in her red heart, red is the color of the ribbon Stamp Paid thought was a cardinal feather. Morrison’s diction used to describe color in Beloved, is a reinvention of the literary color

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All the memories are still there. You live on - in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here” (Albom 174). Morrie believes that if we hold on to love we’ve got from a particular person that once they die, it’s easier to cope with. After reading the book, I believe that although someone’s physical body is gone, you’ll remember the love you’ve gave and recieved which can take you a long way even after they’re not there anymore to

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The religious allusion in Beloved serves many purposes. Creating a common ground for greater mutual understanding, religious allusion expands the audience and greatly helps to clarify many aspects of Morrison’s writing. Everyone knows the Bible, allowing for more universally reaching storytelling through her characterization, narration, and metaphorical writing. While painting vivid pictures of grandiose feasts, imminent apocalyptic destruction, and heavenly preaching figures, Morrison fashions unique identity and easily-comprehendible scenes. The many biblical allusions in Beloved help to universalize the novel, also serving a purpose of providing solid education in territory previously unknown to many modern readers.

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Similarly, the author also uses the rhetorical device diction to establish the concept that people can judge a person by how they sound. For example, on page 39 Morrison writes "Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. " In this line Morrison uses the phrase "their conviction" to help establish her point that beauty standards created by society were in favor of whites instead of blacks.

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Each writer has his or her own special style of writing, some sort of technique that sets them apart from everyone else. Toni Morrison excels at scrambling the events the order in which the reader is presented information. This style of writing creates a tougher book to read, but also a more rewarding reading experience. In "Beloved", by Toni Morrison, Morrison uses nonlinear exposition to create a sense of chaos through out the book, provide her audience with multiple points of view, and provide context for the current or upcoming events. It is apparent to the reader early in the book that the family is borderline insane.

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However, Morrison dispels such a notion by framing Beloved as a work of suffering, repression, and tragedy. She uses the framework of Greek tragedies to illustrate the lingering and traumatic effects

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Briana Talley Michelle Christopherson English 112 17 November 2015 718 words Poltergeist Reincarnated Beloved is one of those books that one wouldn 't normally read unless it was a genre of interest. People often say that it’s a hard read but if you can read it, then you can read anything and that, at first, you won 't understand what 's going on but at one point during reading it, everything will eventually fit together. Toni Morrison evokes the psychological impact of slavery with this haunting tale. Beloved is the kind of story that tugs on your heartstrings while also showing the importance and severity of slavery and racial oppression.

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Beloved by Toni Morrison is a prose written after American Civil war. Beloved was written in honor of Margaret Garner; a black slave who was able to run away from the life of hardship and slavery and moved to the free state of Ohio. The writer represented the life of Margaret in Seethe who was the main character of the novel Beloved. In the novel, Seethe escaped from the sweet home where she was slave and moved to Ohio with her daughters; Denver and beloved. Seethe and her children lived in Ohio for 25 days before the people from the sweet home slavery found her.

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The characters in Beloved, especially Sethe and Paul D are both dehumanized during the slavery experiences by the inhumanity of the white people, their responses to the experience differ due to their different role. Sethe were trapped in the past because the ghost of the dead baby in the house was the representation of Sethe’s past life that she couldnot forget. She accepted the ghost as she accepted the past. But Sethe began to see the future after she confronted her through the appearance of her dead baby as a woman who came to her house. For Sethe, the future existed only after she could explain why she killed her own daughter.

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